Quest Updates Toad Open Source Database Tools

Quest Updates Toad Open Source Database Tools

Quest Software on Monday announced a series of updates to its Toad open source database software applications, including new versions of its Toad Edge, Toad Data Point and Toad Intelligence Central products.

After launching the first version of Toad Edge last summer, the company began seeing an uptick in downloads of freeware that supported MySQL on its Toad World community site. It also received requests to support MariaDB and Postgres, according to Julie Hyman, senior product manager at Quest.

“The customers are now champing at the bit for support of those additional platforms and we are delivering,” she told LinuxInsider.

The company began supporting MariaDB last month. It will provide support for Postgres with a Toad World preview release in February and commercial availability by April or May.

Easier Platform Management

The updated Toad Edge v1.2 makes it easier to develop and manage next-generation open source database platforms, with added support for MariaDB and MySQL instances running on Microsoft Azure, according to Quest.

Toad Data Point v4.3 includes a reconfigured pivot grid with a more straightforward workflow, allowing analysts to add calculated columns. The new version also features enhanced Excel capabilities, including the ability to export directly to an Excel pivot table on demand or in an automated fashion. The new version makes it easier to filter and aggregate a single query result set into multiple views.

Version 4.3 of Toad Intelligence Central allows editing within the Web console, which makes it easier to revise published or shared diagrams, visual queries, automation and SQL files. The update also allows for administrative health check reporting. Further, it provides for dynamic cross-query enhancements, reducing response time for complex database and cross-platform queries.

Market Shift

Seventy percent of new applications will operate on open source databases by this year and 50 percent of commercial databases will have been converted or will be in the process of changing to open source, Quest said, citing Gartner forecasts.

Companies can save up to 80-90 percent of costs compared to similar products from the large commercial data companies, according to Hyman.

Value Proposition

It’s good that Toad has introduced updated capabilities, observed Holger Mueller, principal analyst at Constellation Research, who noted that private equity firm Francisco Partners and hedge fund manager Elliott Management acquired Dell Software Group and in late 2016 relaunched it as Quest.

The value proposition of tools like Toad becomes even greater for developers and DBAs who have to manage data across heterogeneous systems and different platforms, be they cloud or on-premises, Mueller argued.

“Adding more Toad-supported databases in the open source space, like MariaDB and MySQL in this release, gives enterprises more choices, using a common toolset,” he told LinuxInsider. “We will have to see what kind of potential shifts in terms of database load and deployment that will bring, but things will move slowly in the database market.”

The Toad product line has a history of helping database administrators become more effective, said Doug Henschen, also a principal analyst at Constellation.

The company has adapted to the modern DevOps era, he told LinuxInsider. DBAs, developers and analytics professionals now “have to work together in support of fast development and operationalization” and ongoing optimization of data-driven apps.

David Jones is a freelance writer based in Essex County, New Jersey. He has written for Reuters, Bloomberg, Crain’s New York Business and The New York Times.